The decoding of a video stream compressed at low bit rate tends to cause visible artifacts noticeable to a viewer. Blockiness and structured noise patterns are common artifacts that arise when using block-based compression techniques. The human visual system has a greater sensitivity to certain types of artifacts, and thus, such artifacts appear more noticeable and objectionable than others. The addition of random noise to the decoded stream can reduce the noticeability of such compression artifacts, but large frame-to-frame differences created by adding random noise can itself produce artifacts that appear noticeable and objectionable.
The addition of a dither signal can reduce human sensitivity to image artifacts, for example to hide contouring and blocking artifacts. One prior art technique has proposed adding a random noise dither that is based on film grain to an image to disguise block effects. The rationale for adding such random noise is that random error is more forgiving than the structure, or correlated error. Other prior art techniques have proposed adding a dither signal to a video stream to hide compression artifacts. Once past technique has proposed adding a random noise dither in the video encoding and decoding process in the in loop deblocking filter for the ITU/ISO H. 264 video coding standard, commonly known as the JVT coding standard. The amount of dither to be added depends on the position of a pixel with respect to a block edge. Another prior technique has proposed adding that random noise subsequent to video decoding (i.e., adding noise as a “post process”), for use as comfort noise. The amount of noise added depends on the quantization parameter and on the amount of noise added to spatially neighboring pixels. The term “comfort noise” comes from the use of noise in audio compression to indicate noise pattern generated at the receiver end to avoid total silence that is uncomfortable to a listener.
Past techniques for reducing artifacts by adding noise typically reduce spatial artifacts at the risk of creating temporal abnormalities, i.e., large frame-to-frame differences. Thus, there exists a need for a technique for reducing artifacts during decoding of a coded video stream that overcomes the aforementioned disadvantages.